


A Catalyst For Innovation

by Anonymous



Category: Vampire Academy Series - Richelle Mead
Genre: Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 10:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14163174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Several years before the events ofVampire Academyand three years afterThe Turn and the Flame, Tasha and Dimitri talk.





	A Catalyst For Innovation

She tilted her head up high, making sure everyone could see the scars.

“Natasha,” Evette said, those familiar blue eyes widening in momentary surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Tasha smiled sardonically.

She preferred to spend time with the guardians. After all, most of them didn’t recoil from the sight of her face. But she had games to play, and work to do.

“Oh?” she said with mock politeness. “I’m so sorry to disappoint. But as much as you might hate it, I’m an Ozera. I have every right to be here.”

To her credit, Evette didn’t falter.

“Of course,” she said, and inclined her head. “Sit.”

That caused a minor uproar. Tasha rolled her eyes and pitched her voice to be heard over the clamour. “Lucas is gone. That makes _me_ the voting member of my branch of the Ozeras.”

Several people flinched at the name, and she had to bite her lip to refrain from shouting at them. What right did they have? To act as if it were _them_ whose worlds had fallen apart, who had lost nearly everyone that mattered to them?

_I am a scion of the House Ozera._

She pulled out her chair and sat. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think we have actual issues to discuss.”

* * *

“Congratulations, _Guardian_ Belikov,” she said with a grin, and he smiled back at her.

“Thank you, Lady Ozera.” He opened the door for her. “I was sent to come retrieve you. Ivan asked that I bring you to his home. He won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon, but he says that his home is yours.”

“I can stay in a hotel, I wouldn’t want to be a bother,” she tried to say, but Dimitri shook his head.

“No trouble at all,” he assured her, and insisted upon carrying her bag for her.  “It’s good to see you again, Tasha.”

Warmth rose in her chest as she stole a glance over at him. He wasn’t like Vinh, and the relief was almost overwhelming. She doubted she’d even be able to look at anyone that bore an obvious resemblance to Vinh again.

She raised a hand to absently brush her cheek with the tips of her fingers and followed him to the car.

* * *

She stepped out onto the balcony and sat down, pulling her knees up to her chest and clutching her bottle of vodka tight.

Three years to the day, and the sharp, shocking pain had faded to a dull ache. There were even times when she could almost forget, for a few blissful minutes at a time. This wasn’t one of those. Today…it was worse than most.

The cool air felt good against her skin, and she tried to focus on that. It was only a few minutes before Dimitri joined her, slipping out the door, closing it behind him, and sitting down next to her wordlessly. He folded his long legs and leaned against the glass, apparently content to sit in silence.

Tasha had never been one for quiet and patience.

“That picture on the bookshelf,” she said. “With you and Ivan. The other guy is Ivan’s other guardian?”

“Mmhmm,” Dimitri confirmed. “Anton.”

“He’s cute,” she noted.

“You really prefer dhampirs, don’t you?” he asked, amused, and it was all she could do not to blush. He was younger than her by several years, yet that question made her feel as embarrassed as ten-year-old being teased by an older sibling.

A sign of friendship, she supposed, that he was comfortable asking questions like that.

“Yeah,” she admitted. “I do.”

“Why?” he asked, and she half wondered if he were mocking her. His brown eyes glinted warmly. “Don’t you have enough scandal in your life?”

“I’m not afraid of scandal,” she said, and laughed a little. “I’m not afraid of much anymore.”

The mild amusement in his eyes faded, and his brow furrowed as he frowned.

“And who knows?” she deflected, suddenly desperate to lighten the mood. “Maybe I’d like Moroi more if fewer of them were cowards.”

He tilted his head in silent question. She looked down at her hands, watched as her fingers clutched the bottle so tightly, her knuckles started to turn white.

“I set Lucas on fire,” she said. “My – my brother. I didn’t know how to fight, how to protect Christian, nothing, I just set him on fire. All those distant relatives of mine flinch at his name as if hearing it is just _so scary for them._ As if it were them that did it, were them in that house.”

_Them whose faces he ripped out._

“You did what you had to do,” he assured her, and she nodded. Took a swig from the bottle.

“I know. He wasn’t my brother anymore.”

His breath tickled her temple, and she glanced up at him again to see his face very close to hers. She could feel the heat radiating from his skin, see the warm glow the sunlight cast upon him. She moved to close the distance…He scooted back.

_Oh._

“Sorry,” she mumbled, looking away, face burning. “I thought –”

“It wouldn’t be right,” he said.

Something about that didn’t quite sit right with her.

“Why not?” she asked, and the effort to keep the plaintive note out of her voice made it sound harsher than she intended, almost a demand. She tried to soften it. She failed. “Don’t want to kiss a woman that’s going to go Strigoi? Or is it the torn-out face that’s bothering you?”

She wasn’t being fair. This was petty, petty and childish. She knew that, but her mind was cloudy, and right then, she couldn’t think of any other reason he would be so opposed to her just touching him.

“Of course not,” he said, sounding genuinely shocked. “You’re brilliant, brave, and beautiful. I know full well you’re not going to become a Strigoi.”

_But…_

She waited, but Dimitri didn’t elaborate.

“Is it…is it that I’m a Moroi?” she asked, quieter now, barely above a whisper. That had been at least part of Vinh’s reasoning, after they’d left school. But Dimitri shook his head.

“You’re drunk. You’re drunk and you’re lonely. This isn’t a good day for you.”

She just stared. That was it? Somehow, that had never occurred to her. She laughed it off. “I guess I am five years older than you, huh.”

He smiled. “I don’t mind that.”

“No?”

“No,” he confirmed. “But I don’t think you should be looking for a distraction. Not after you lost your brother, sister, and Vinh in one day.”

All traces of her laughter fled her face in an instant.

“I loved him,” she said, and for once, thinking about it didn’t feel like carving her own heart out of her chest. The pain had faded enough that she now just felt numb. She took a drink, and passed Dimitri the bottle. “How the hell am I supposed to consider any of _them_ worth losing him? He was worth a thousand of them.”

“I think that’s the wrong question.” His gaze was so heavy, she could barely hold it, even as she couldn’t look away. Dimitri set the bottle aside without drinking any, concern etched across that handsome face. “He considered _you_ worth it.”

“I went to Vietnam,” she blurted out. “After. To talk to his mother.”

“Did you?” he asked, eyebrows raising in mild surprise.

“I didn’t know how she’d react,” she admitted. “He died for _me._ And it was my family that killed him. If someone came to me and told me their brother killed Christian for protecting them…”

Dimitri’s headshake was slow. His eyes clouded over.

“She’s a dhampir and Vinh was a guardian,” he said. “It’s…it’s different. Our mothers… _expect_ may be the wrong word, but they’re gotten used to the idea. They know they might hear the news any time, and they’re as prepared as they can be.”

She swallowed hard. Her mouth felt painfully dry, and she eyed the bottle on Dimitri’s other side. “That’s horrible.”

He didn’t disagree.

“The royals…”  She trailed off, recognizing the irony. She _was_ a royal. Maybe a bit of an outcast among the other families, even within her own, but she was. Christian was. And here she was talking as if she hadn’t enjoyed the benefits of that for nearly all her life. She pushed on anyway. “They don’t see any problem with cowering behind the guardians, with treating them like fucking human shields. They don’t care about him, they never did. None of them are worth a drop of his blood. When I talked to Tatiana, after, she acted like the guardians…like they’re just – just something that can be replaced, as if they weren’t just murdered.”

“You know that’s not always true. Not _often,_ even.”

She raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Why are _you_ defending this?”

He took the question seriously, considering it for a moment before answering. “Because it’s what it is. Change will take time. We cling to tradition out of fear, but that doesn’t mean we can’t adapt to new times.”

He favoured her with a warm smile. “We’re lucky you’re around. Even those that agree with you in principle…few of them have your passion, your drive. If anyone can convince the Council of the need to change, it’ll be you.”

Part of her was flattered by the vote of confidence, but the rest…

“Why do you do this?” she demanded, waving her arms wildly. “Are you insane? They’re not worth it!”

He met her gaze evenly and admitted, “Sometimes, I wonder the same thing.”

“And?” she pressed.

“And then I remember that my charge is my friend,” he said. “And that I want him safe.”

“Is that – that can’t be enough.” She bit down on her lip until she tasted blood. “Very few get to protect people they _like,_ much less their friends.”

He nodded in agreement. “True. But it’s still necessary. My people would go extinct without yours. Either the Strigoi would kill you all and become even stronger until they could pick us off one by one, we’d die off without a means of reproduction, or some combination of the two.”

It was startlingly blunt. She shook her head hard.

“We’re one people,” she said. “We go to the same schools, we live in the same societies…but the Moroi, we don’t do anything to protect ourselves! The novices learn to fight from the time they’re children, giving up their own lives, for the sake of protecting a handful of families. And the Moroi don’t learn any of that, not even the non-royals who are going to go off alone. I support self defence and combat training, of course I do, for everyone, but…this isn’t _fair._ To any of us, but especially them.”

“No,” Dimitri agreed. “It’s not.”

He smiled faintly, eyes going soft and distant. “My sisters have had the same training as I have, but they didn’t become guardians. Karolina once told me that she’d rather use it to defend our family than royals.”

That made her smile, too. “I like her already.”

“She would like you, too.”

She half wondered if he was just saying that.

“If you could study anything,” she said, smile fading a little, a desperate urge to change the subject surging through her, “what would you choose?”

“I think…literature,” he said haltingly, and she found herself smiling again, wistfully this time. She could picture him in an armchair with a book and several pens, carefully writing observations onto Post-it notes and sticking them to the pages. He would never write in the book, of course – he’d be so, so careful with it, never marking it, leaving it so pristine that if he removed the Post-its, no one would ever know he’d touched it. “What about you?”

“When I was little, I wanted to be a bush pilot,” she admitted. “Or a skydiving instructor. Or a volcanologist. Lucas told me I was being silly and would grow out of that. Moira said those weren’t proper jobs for royalty.”

A short laugh bubbled from her throat, sharp and humourless. “Ironic, huh?”

His forehead creased with a concerned frown. “Tasha…”

She waited, but he didn’t continue. Maybe he’d realized there was nothing _to_ say to that.

“I never thought Lucas would do… _that_ ,” she said. “I never thought he _could._ He was – he was my _brother._ If he could…how do I know I wouldn’t? That I wouldn’t be that much of a coward?”

His response was immediate and surprisingly simple: “Because you didn’t. You weren’t.”

Her breath caught in her chest, and she kept looking at him, searching his face for any trace of deceit. He continued, “You could have joined them. Could have let them take Christian. But you didn’t.”

“I –” she started to say, but cut herself off.

“Tasha…” Dimitri’s eyes were intent, serious. “You are braver by far than Lucas Ozera ever was. I didn’t know you before, but it’s clear you were always stronger than him. Even then.”

“Really?” Her voice was uncharacteristically small. Dimitri nodded.

“I’d have to be a fool to think you were ever going to voluntarily go Strigoi,” he said. “A blind fool. I’m a lot of things, but blind isn’t one of them.”

He reached to touch her face, slowly, telegraphing his movements so that she knew what he was going to do and had plenty of time to pull away. Even so, she started when his warm fingers brushed her cheek – the scarred one.

“No one brave enough to put herself between two Strigoi and a child…to hold them off alone, without any weapons, even when one of them tore out her cheek…no one that could do that would ever become one of them.”

Her throat was tight. Her eyes stung.

“One weapon,” she managed to say, and held out her hand, palm up. Fire crackled to life within it. “One weapon.”

Dimitri nodded slowly in acknowledgement. “A powerful one.”

“Vinh was the first person to not look at me as if I were crazy when I suggested that.” She looked down at the merrily dancing flames. _A weapon. A gift. A chance at life._ “Just about the only rebellious thing he ever did.”

“He was a good guardian,” Dimitri said. She made a face. Of course he’d been a good guardian. The best. But obeying all the rules wasn’t why.

“From the day we graduated to the day he died, he insisted on calling me _Lady Ozera,_ ” she said. The words tasted sour in her mouth. So much wasted time. All that time they could have been happy together, time she could never get back, wasted, trying to do what her family wanted. Her family, full of cowards and traitors.

_I am a scion of the House Ozera._

She and Christian. They were all that was left.

_Tasha, run!_

She closed her hand, extinguishing the flames, unable to look at them anymore. Dimitri was still waiting patiently for her to finish. “He –”

She cut herself off and took a shaky breath.

“No one is going to be responsible for my protection but me,” she said instead. “Not anymore. Not after him. I’m done letting other people die for me.”

“The guardians respect you a great deal,” Dimitri told her. “That you feel this way is a major reason why.”

“Thanks,” she muttered. She clenched her fist tighter until her nails dug into her palm. She focused on the sensation, grounding herself. “God, how do you do it?”

“Do what?”

She looked up at him for the briefest of moments. “Take responsibility for so many people.”

“I suppose…because I know I have to,” he said. “It’s difficult. And like you said, it doesn’t always feel fair. But it’s important.”

She sighed deeply. Clenched her fist as hard as she could. “I’m all Christian has left. He can’t…he can’t lose anyone else. I have to protect him.”

“And you will,” Dimitri said, voice so even and confident that she found herself believing him, believing what would have sounded like a meaningless platitude from anyone else. “You’ve taught him to use his fire. He won’t be helpless. He’s far more capable than most Moroi twice his age. And he has the best role model I can think of.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

They remained there, sitting on the balcony, as the sun crept further and further into the sky.

“Come on,” he said eventually, rising and offering her a hand. “You should get some rest.”

He helped her to her feet and steadied her when she stumbled, guiding her back to her room with a gentle hand on her back. She paused in the doorway and turned to face him again, strangely reluctant to go inside.

He didn’t leave immediately, instead hovering in front of her and studying her face.

“You know, Tasha…even guardians rely on each other. You don’t have to do it all on your own.” He hesitated, then reached to squeeze her shoulder. “Good night.”

He let her go, and turned to walk away. She missed the warmth of his hand as soon as it was gone.

“Good night,” she said softly to his retreating back. She stepped backwards into her room and closed the door after her.

**Author's Note:**

> Tasha is by far my favourite character in the series, and all these years later, I still think the last book did her an enormous disservice.


End file.
